Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

This bill seeks to provide to protection for children under 16 years of age from the harms associated with social media. It does this by requiring social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children under 16 from opening and maintaining social media accounts. In principle I do support this bill.

The ubiquitous use of social media apps among teenagers and children has created an environment that no other generation has had to encounter. We know that we—and that includes every living person—now live through our phones, our tablets and the news they provide, don't we? There's the envious review of a friend's photos from an overseas trip or the quick text chat with a friend or acquaintance. Sadly, this easy access has also robbed us of more personal and meaningful communication—the stuff we once enjoyed. One only has to look around in a restaurant to see couples of all ages heads down in their phones, scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, at the expense of their dinner companions. The thing that I've seen too often in my community and in other places around Australia is mum or dad sitting in the park on their phone while their children are on the equipment.

As a society, we're losing the ability to communicate. As for the young, many are missing out on the opportunity to develop the very communication skills that are so necessary for social, physical and mental wellbeing. It is ironic that social media, the very tools that enable us to communicate more easily with others, and other technological advancement before it, has in many respects, I think, had the opposite effect. Not too long ago, those aged 64 and older had the highest reported rates of loneliness and feelings of isolation. Social media opened up the world for older people to communicate directly with friends and family at their whim. However, the loneliest cohort now is the 16- to 24-year-olds, a complete inverse of historical loneliness records.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, HILDA, which collects data on personal wellbeing, labour market dynamics and family life, provides an important insight into the lives of 17,000 Australians over the course of their lifetime. The HILDA Survey found that, between 2011 and 2021, the rate of psychological stress among 15- to 25-year-olds increased by 120 per cent. The Australian Psychological Society advises that psychologists report that teenagers are determining their self-worth on the number of likes they receive and are left feeling rejected if they don't receive instant approvals for their posts. In a recent media statement, the society stated that more than four in 10 Australian teens now suffer mental health distress, with experts drawing a link in the rise of cases with the use of social media.

The rate of hospitalisation for intentional self-harm surged to 70 per cent in young women aged 15 to 19 between 2008-2009 and 2021-2022. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that digital platforms were not toxic in their original formulation, but that everything changed at the beginning of 2009 when Facebook added the 'like' button and later the 'share' button. The adoption of social media and the introduction of engagement tools such as 'like' and 'share' functions demonstrates a disturbing correlation. It is a correlation which appears to specifically affect the younger generation.

But, as I asked in my speech on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, is legislation always the best form of action? If we are going to legislate, I think it's really important that we don't rush it. While acknowledging the negative aspects of social media and its indiscriminate effect on the young, there are many positive aspects. Social media provides opportunities for young people to digitally socialise and find people with shared interests. Importantly, it has become a useful communication tool among peers and parents alike.

There is a concern that removing under-16s from social media may have the adverse effect of further isolating a generation. Worse, it may drive children to unregulated web channels and social media services. This was raised in several submissions to the bill. Unregulated platforms offer minimal or no safeguards and pose greater risks from bad actors. If we think children won't find a workaround, we are kidding ourselves. They are, after all, digital natives, and, really, none of us in this room could argue that we are digital natives.

The merits of protecting our children are not up for debate; protecting them is a must. What is up for debate is how we achieve this, and I think we need to do this very carefully. Rushing legislation has been demonstrated time and time again to be a futile exercise; in fact, you could even say it is a dangerous exercise. We know from past experience that good legislation, particularly on major reforms such as this, requires extensive consultation and sufficient time for due diligence by members. Yet here we are with a bill on which the government gave a mere 24 hours to the public for feedback—24 hours!

This is the antithesis of good legislative practice, and I think that is where my real concerns sit. This feels so incredibly rushed for legislation that's not really supposed to be in operation for more than a year, perhaps two. It is a bill that requires age verification to be undertaken by social media platforms but is silent on how this occurs. We're told these details will be worked out later. I can't recall a single piece of legislation being passed where the details of operation were not known.

My concerns reflect those of many in my community. Yes, parents want a safer digital environment, but they're also adverse to tech giants having even greater access to personal data than they already have. The suggestion that these companies will only hold data for 24 hours provides no comfort, nor does the thought that these companies are mining our social media accounts to guess what age we are. These intrusions are deeply problematic and simply do not address the underlying issues; they just delay the inevitable.

The statistics on mental health deterioration, psychological distress and self-harm don't magically stop at 16. This bill doesn't necessarily make social media safer. It simply delays the danger until a young person turns 16. Good policy identifies a problem and, where appropriate, identifies a legislative fix. This bill suggests children are the problem and delaying their access is the fix, and that just can't be so. It does nothing to protect children 16 years and over, and, in doing nothing, it actually creates data risks that were previously not there. We know in the business world that data is gold, and it appears we're going to be gifting it to the social media monoliths by the pallet load.

I've circulated amendments, which I'll speak to later, to provide necessary personal identification protections to the millions of social media users that will potentially require age verification if this bill passes. I'm pleased to hear that apparently the government will be putting forward amendments in the Senate that pretty much mirror the amendments that I am putting to this House. I'm not sure why we couldn't support it in this House and somehow try and improve this bill that's going to inevitably pass in this House before it gets to the other place.

I, like every other Australian and every other parent, want to protect children—our children, our nation's children—from the harms caused by social media. However, I am very much concerned about not only the privacy aspect but also that this legislation is very rushed, is insufficiently consulted on, fails to address human rights concerns and, consequently, perhaps may not achieve the desired outcome. I just fail to understand why we are in such a hurry to do this in the last days of this year's parliamentary term. Why could we not have seen this bill months ago? Why can we not come back and look at this next year if it's not actually going to be in operation for a very long time? Since the minimum-age obligation will not be activated for at least 12 months, there really is no justification in rushing through this bill. I think it's just here to serve a political imperative rather than a safety imperative.

So, at this point, I'm very vexed on how I should vote on this bill—I really am. It's a flawed bill. The principle is great. I understand the principle. My community understands the principle, but this legislation appears to be incredibly flawed.

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